Archives for August 2007

Today’s Guest Blogger is Logos’ Director of Marketing, Dan Pritchett
One of my favorite features in Logos Bible Software is “Englishman’s Concordance”. Since I really don’t know Greek or Hebrew, it is one of the best ways for me to get the full flavor for any particular word I am trying to understand better in English. The “Englishman’s Concordance” feature shows me every time the underlying Greek or Hebrew word was used in the original languages and which word it was translated to in English.
So today, I stumbled upon an article written by John Piper called “Did Moses Marry a Black Woman?” where Piper states the following:

We learn in Numbers that “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (Num. 12:1). A Cushite is from Cush, a region south of Ethiopia, where the people are known for their black skin. We know this because of Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian [the same Hebrew word translated “Cushite” in Numbers 12:1] change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” Attention is drawn to the difference of the skin of the Cushite people.

As I read that paragraph I wondered how many times the actual word in Hebrew that Piper is referencing was translated “Cushite” and how many times it was translated “Ethiopian” and how many times it was translated something else. So I fired up my Logos Bible Software and went straight to Numbers 12:1 and took a look at it in the ESV English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear Old Testament, right-clicked on “Cushite” and executed “Englishman’s Concordance”.
As you can see in the screenshot כושׁי appears 25 times in the Old Testament and is translated “Cushite” or “Cushites” 13 times, “Ethiopian” or “Ethiopians” 12 times.
I went on to study the subject in many more ways thanks to the Topic Study, Word Study, and more, but it just reminded me how useful the “Englishman’s Concordance” can be for quickly seeing how the exact same word in the original text can be translated into different words in English. It is a blessing to be able to read multiple translations of God’s Word in my native tongue, but a reminder to me that there is no substitute for the original language of the text.

I was working my way through the first portion of 1Ti 6.10 the other day. This is the well-known clause, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1Ti 6.10a, ESV).

I was specifically looking at “… of all kinds of evils”, and had some ideas on how to use syntax searching to help me examine that portion of the verse. It was too much to write down; at almost 15 minutes it was nearly too long for a video (I ramble a bit at the end, though).

Logos Bible Software for the Mac is getting closer all the time! Yesterday we were able to record our first video showing the software in action.

Click on the image below to view the high-res version of that video. The video may take a few minutes to load. If you really can’t wait, you can view the low res version by clicking the link below the image.

The software is showing books, running searches, comparing versions, creating a Passage Guide, and more. (Today we even inserted a shipping DVD and discovered, copied, and viewed existing electronic books without modification.)

There are bugs to fix, help files to write, features to hook up, and some polishing we need to do on the user interface. It shouldn’t be too long before we’re able to release an Alpha for external testing.

Just a reminder: There is no beta list. When we’re ready for Alpha or Beta testing, we will announce it to this email list and at www.logos.com/mac. So please do email us your encouragement and feedback, but please don’t email us asking to be on the top-secret, VIP-only, private early beta list. Because there isn’t one. :-)

Guillermo Powell, Logos’ International Director for Spanish Products,recently returned from Guatemala, where he spent an entire week presenting Logos in several seminaries, including radio and TV interviews. Latin American countries are quickly catching up with technology, and as economies improve, even pastors and some students can afford our libraries. Logos’ Spanish Department has been working hard to spread the word about our ground-breaking new products – created specifically for the Spanish speaking Bible student.

In February of this year Logos introduced three brand new versions of the program. This releasemore than quadrupled the number of Spanish books available in Libronix format. The Biblioteca Pastoral represents a huge step for the Spanish world. The number of resources included in the collection has recently jumped from 40 to 143. This is pretty amazing when you consider that NO other Bible software company has more than a few Spanish books. Just take one look at the impressive resource list and you don’t have to speak Spanish to realize that this collection was just given a major overhaul.

Of the 110 new books in the Biblioteca Pastoral, the standout resource is undoubtedly the new Spanish-Greek and Spanish-Hebrew Reverse Interlinears. Spanish speakers can now do the same type of research into the original languages that English pastors have been able to do since the release of Logos Bible Software 3.

One of the other newly revised collections is the Biblioteca Académica Bilingüe, which was expanded from 70 to more than210 books. The exciting aspect of this library is that, for the first time, many Spanish pastors can afford a digital library that is larger than their current print library.

The third of these new Spanish collections is completely dedicated to missions. La Biblioteca Digital de la Misión has 40 titles that focus on missions (both foreign and local), church planting, and support for missionaries. All this is done from a uniquely Latin American perspective.

English speaking readers might be thinking, “This is all exciting stuff, but how doesit affect me?” Guillermoencourages, “American churches that support missionaries in Spanish speaking countries should consider giving their missionaries these unique libraries. Just the savings in shipping books, pays forthe Bilingual library!”

For the past two summers, the church that I attend has had a series called “Summer of Psalms” as the basis of its evening services during the summer. They have someone (not the pastors) do a teaching from a psalm. It’s pretty fun, and we end up learning a lot from the different ways in which the lessons are presented.
This year, I taught during one of those services. My text was Psalm 20. And I couldn’t help myself; the teaching is heavily influenced by the underlying structure implied by the syntax of the Hebrew—even though I don’t really know Hebrew.
If you’ve read the blog for awhile, you know that I have some level of understanding of the Greek of the New Testament and its grammar and syntax. However, I’ve not been lucky enough to study Hebrew. I know the alphabet and can vocalize the letters, but I have no understanding of it.
I used the lesson as an opportunity to look at the structure of Psalm 20 using the Andersen-Forbes Phrase Marker Analysis (aka Hebrew Syntax Graphs). I’d always heard that Hebrew poetry was a beautiful thing, but using the syntax graphs I was finally able to see it for the first time. It gave me a newfound appreciation for Hebrew poetry.
I couldn’t help myself; the lesson I put together focused on the structure of the Hebrew of Psalm 20. I didn’t do a single syntax search; I just examined how Andersen & Forbes broke the text down (that is, I looked at the arrows) to get an understanding of the poetic structure of Psalm 20. Using the View | Interlinear feature, I throttled the Hebrew Syntax Graphs down to only display “Clause-Immediate Constituent” and “English Literal Translation”, so I could track clause constituents without worrying about the other levels (supra-clausal structures and phrase levels). So Psalm 20.7 (in the Hebrew it’s v. 8) looks like this:

Psalm 20.7 (v. 8 in Hebrew), click for larger image

I didn’t know what to expect from the teaching, but folks said they liked the lesson. That’s encouraging. So if you’ve ever wondered how in the world “syntax” could be directly useful to exegesis and preaching, well, this could be an example. I thought I’d upload the sermon so y’all could look at it and perhaps see how simply looking at the structure implied by the syntax graphs (and not actually searching for stuff) could be used in the context of exegesis and teaching — particularly by someone who has a basic understanding of language and syntax but no formal training in Biblical Hebrew.

Awhile back, we released the Apostolic Fathers in Greek and English (3 editions, with morphology).
In this collection, J.B. Lightfoot’s classic English translation was only versified to chapter boundaries. That’s the way it is in the print, so that’s how the Logos edition was done.
Or, I should say, that’s how it was originally done. We’ve updated the resource and added versification down to the verse level. So it should now synch-scroll properly. If the Lightfoot English translation is one’s preferred Apostolic Fathers edition, then it will keylink more accurately.
You can download the resource (APFTHLFTENG.lbxlls) from our FTP site: ftp://ftp.logos.com/lbxbooks/APFTHLFTENG.lbxlls. First, shut down your Logos Bible Software if it is running. Next, save the above referenced file to wherever you keep your resources on your hard drive (typically c:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources). Then start up your Logos, and you’re ready to go.
Enjoy!

What have archaeologists and biblical scholars recently learned about the location of King David’s tomb? What are some misconceptions about the tomb’s whereabouts? What implications would a discovery of such magnitude have on the Christian faith?

David Sielaff will be driving up to Bellingham from Portland, Oregon to address those questions in tonight’s lecture The Lost Tomb of King David. David Sielaff has been the Director of the Associates for Scriptural Knowledge since 2002. The mission of ASK is to strengthen the faith of Bible believers through education and improved understanding of biblical themes. Much like Logos, ASK places special emphasis on studying original documents and primary sources.

Tonight’s event will be the seventh lecture in Logos’ continuing Lecture Series. The lecture will begin at 7:00 PM at Mount Baker Theatre. As with each previous event, The Lost Tomb of King David is free to attend and open to the public.

For those who are not able to attend the lecture, an extended version of it can be found in MP3 format at the Associates for Scriptural Knowledge website. In addition to this lecture, the ASK website has dozens more audio presentations, articles and commentaries. This is one website that should definitely be bookmarked by every pastor and student of the Bible.

For those who live within driving distance of Bellingham, we hope to see you there!

A key member of the Logos Blog team has packed up his keyboard and headed east, to live near family. Daniel Foster was a regular contributor to this blog and his wide variety of posts displayed extraordinary versatility and knowledge of biblical studies and technology.

Two years ago Daniel introduced himself to the blogosphere and since then he has contributed an amazing 241 posts. For those who wonder what he’ll be doing with his newfound spare time after his retirement from blogging, much of it will be filled taking care of his soon-to-be-born third daughter (also known as Foster 3.0 around the office).

Daniel was always a stickler for quality and grammatical correctness, but here are a few of his more memorable posts:

In last week Friday’s post, I blogged about something that J.H. Moulton calls the “Pindaric Construction”. In a comment to that post, David Pereira noted:

The other cases I would question are those in which the “singular things” are joined by “or” or “nor” rather than by the word “and” such as in Matt 12:25. Though these might technically fit the description you gave earlier (i.e. where “a group of singular things in the subject have a singular verb in the predicate”), I don’t think they represent any diversion from standard grammar. Take this for example: “Neither a CAT nor a DOG IS allowed inside.” Though there are multiple subjects, the conjunction serves to relate each singular noun to the singular verb individually. So, I don’t think this is anything more than standard grammar for subject/predicate agreement.

Following up with David, I wrote:

On the search generally — I was surely thinking but apparently didn’t write that syntax searching like this is a way to evaluate assertions made in grammars like Moulton’s. Yes, the hits “techincally” match the description; they must be further evaluated to see if they all really do function as proposed. I think, in this sort of application, syntax searching is a way to narrow initial hits (the same search using only morphology and proximity would be complex if at all possible), not always acheive 100% grammatical accuracy (particularly when context can play a role in analysis).

I don’t know how special the structure is. There are instances like Mk 4.41 (joined by και) where the two singular things are combined with a singular verb, and it might be interesting to note them. But there are also the sorts of things you mention. Perhaps the better search would be to skip the ‘anything’ on the second word group, add και as connector, and see how the hit list changes. I smell a follow-up post …

This is that follow-up post. Here’s the modified query I mention above:

I removed the anything operator between the two word groups in the Subject component.

I added a Connector to the second word group, the word και in an effort to search for conjunctive relationships between the groups (or, an ‘and’ style relationship) instead of disjunctive relationships (‘or’ relationships) or negative relationships (‘nor’/’not’ relationship).

I added the requirement that the first word group in the query also be the first word group in the Subject. This means that even if there are more than two word groups, the query will only find the structure once — instead of one hit for each combination of two word groups in the structure (as happened in Col 3.11 with the previous query).

I changed some highlighting so the whole subject would be highlighted instead of individual word groups within the subject.

The result? Well, the hit list shrinks, from 275 hits to 81 hits. Many of the sorts of hits that David mentions in his comment are weeded out. Additionally, we only have one hit for verses like Col 3.11 (instead of the many hits of the previous query). That’s all good.
But some other hits are weeded out too. Re 9.12, one of Moulton’s original five examples, is no longer present. Further evaluation leads me to think that Moulton really meant Re 9.2 (which is located by this query) instead of 9.12, which just doesn’t make sense.
What does it all mean? I really don’t know. Chances are this just once again proves that the nice-and-tidy syntactic structures mentioned in passing in grammars (along with examples) aren’t necessarily as nice-and-tidy as they’re made out to be. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Language is messy.
But what is possible now with these syntactic annotations is to begin to evaluate these sorts of statements about grammatical structures. We can now, with the assistance of syntactic annotations, build searches that take these larger-level clause and phrase structures into account, along with morphology, and then examine the supposed structure in greater detail to see if there really is something there.
And that was what I was angling toward in the first blog post (along with showing the new Unordered Group object), though I didn’t really say it: Here’s a structure mentioned in a grammar, what do we find if we actually search the whole corpus for something like it? Well, that is just one of the things we can do now. In the long run, this sort of work will end up making grammars sharper in their discussion and presentation of data.

I don’t know offhand how many have installed the latest beta (3.0e RC 2 as of the writing of this post) of the LDLS; and I have even less of an idea of how many of those users have explored the Syntax Search dialog. But we added two new “objects” to the query model, and they’re pretty nifty.
These objects are available for all syntax databases, though my example below is from the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament.

Group:Used to group things together. Order and structure matter in the group operator. This is best used when you want to use OR on groups of objects. Think of it like parentheses in other search/grouping syntax—it allows multiple things to be treated as one, as a “group”.

Unordered Group:One hindrance of the Syntax Search dialog in the past was the necessity to specify all possible options when component order was not important. Let’s say I wanted to search for a clause with a particular noun as subject, and a particular verb as the predicator but I didn’t care about the order in which the subject and predicator occurred. It could be S-P or P-S. In the past, I would’ve had to specify both orders and use the OR operator, as well as anything operators between components. Now the components (and their content) can be specified as an Unordered Group, and the software permutes the possible combinations.

Perhaps an example would help explain the Unordered Group object.
Just the other day I was reading J.H. Moulton’s Prolegomena volume in the Moulton-Howard-Turner Grammar (which is on pre-pub, BTW … make sure to get your copy while it is relatively cheap!) and on page 58 he mentions something called the σχημα Πινδαρικον, or the “Pindaric Construction”. This is when a group of singular things in the subject have a singular verb in the predicate.
That’s not exactly easy to understand; an example would help. A good example is Mark 4.41, ” … that even the wind and the sea obey him?” The subject consists of two singular nouns, but the verb is singular too. A more literal translation might be “the wind and the sea it obeys him”. So the subject here acts as a single unit instead of as two things, and the verb is singular instead of plural (“it obeys” vs. “they obey”). Kinda weird. [NB: see the comments to this post for some important clarifications — RB]
Moulton gives five examples: Mt 5.18; 6.19; Mk 4.41; 1Co 15.50; Re 9.12. But I was curious to know how many more might exist in the NT. Moulton says “It is really only a special case of anacoluthon, no more peculiar to Pindar than to Shakspere (sic).” (Moulton, 58). Looking at Mark 4.41, we can see the structure in question:

Note the two word groups in the subject, each with a head term that is singular in morphological number. And also note the predicator, which contains a head term that is singular in morphological number. That’s the structure, essentially. So what does it take to find further instances? Here’s a screen shot of the query:

A few things to notice in the query.
First, note the use of the Unordered Group object. The contents are two clause components, one a Subject, the other a Predicator. These objects are what are permuted, so you’re searching for the equivalent of ([subject]-anything-[predicator]) OR ([predicator]-anything-[subject]) though you didn’t have to specify it.
Second, a general note. This query shows how syntax searching takes advantage higher-level phrase-and-clause annotation (clauses, subjects, verbs, groups, etc.) but also relies upon word-level morphological information. Morphology, lemmas, and other word-level information is important and foundational; but syntax searching takes the next step in building additional annotation upon that foundation and allowing interaction between all available levels.
Below is an example of some of the results. All told, there are 275 instances of this query located in the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament.

Once results are available, they can be graphed. Below is an example of a graph charting hit density in chapters. (Or, you could export the hit data from here to Excel, and do your own charting/math/analysis/whatever). Interesting in the chart is Colossians 3, which is densest area listed. Here’s the chart:

The hit density in Col 3 is a result of Col 3.11, which has a number of word groups in the Subject. You know, “Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free”:

Anyway, queries that search for groups of things (most syntax queries do this to account for varying structures) should be easier now. And once you have that data, you can still do nifty things with it—reviewing highlighted hits, graphing the hits to check different measures of distribution, and the like.